The Cloud, how wonderful it is. Let us put all of our knowledge and experience into the Cloud where it will be available to everyone everywhere at their very finger tips. Save the forests and the environment, no paper needed with the Cloud. No written books, no libraries, all of that is in the past. The knowledge of the entire world is instantly accessible at any time from the Google Oracle. Ask and ye shall receive. What an enlightened society it will bring.

What happens if you don't have a wifi connection and are out of 3g signal range - Does the chromebook becomes a chrome brick?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good point! and you are 100% right on... but... is it any different than your cell-phone? I'm sure you have one of those? doesn't everybody in this age!!! Pretty hard to be without one anymore. If Cloud stuff eventually goes all satellite (and I believe it will) the problems with dead-spots (like cell-phones, Google Chromebooks will have) will be a thing of the past. It's just a matter of time and it should be as affordable as cable, maybe even a lot less as it becomes more popular. I know our government is currently working on a plan to get the entire U.S. capable of wireless, high-speed Internet, there are even rumors of wifi inducted into electric lines... Wow... blows your mind.

Many are rambling on about 'Big Brother' watching us via the Cloud... I'll only say it once... since anyone has had a Land-Line or Cell Phone, Internet Connection (any type.. land-line, cable, sattelite, wifi) you have given up what used to be know as 'Privacy.' Especially since 911. Super Computers can now track 'everyone's Internet and phone calls in less than a minute, and that's for EVERYONE in the entire world! So don't even try to debate that issue!

What we are in people is a 'Technology BOOM' Not I, but the so-called experts predict that technology will advance 'More In The Next Year' than it has in the 'Past 20-Years' They say it will be more than our minds can keep up too... From what I see happening on a day by day basis, I can believe it!!! Thankfully, there are still enough 'Light' Puppy programs to fill our needs on the older hardware and probably so for years to come but that doesn't mean one should be turning his head the other way to new technology, In my tread in these forums on Cloud Puppy, I listed some Cloud programs (and Lobster listed quiet a few in his post there) All these can be used by ANY version of Puppy to enhance ones online experience with apps (in the Cloud) many that are not possible to install or normally use in any Puppy Version (except via your Browser.) If you can't call that 'A step Forward' I don't know what else there is, I certainly don't see anything better being developed for Puppy's future anywhere?

"The Cloud" doesn't particularly concern me, not in the "Big Brother" sense that most in the thread seem to fear. Like most things, you pays your money, and you takes your chances.

I'm worried that it is, at the end of the day, simply data lock-in that will be the worst thing about the cloud. (We've all fought that battle before) It will shake out to a few big corporations, and putting your data in any silo will mean it becomes increasingly more difficult to get out, either through lack of standards, or merely through inertia. Every tried to upload, or download, 75GB of photos? Imagine moving your data after 10 years of uploading pics, movies, docs, spreadsheets, etc. I shudder...._________________"Everywhere is within walking distance, if you have the time." - Steven Wright

The Cloud is inevitable simply because that is where computer technology is headed. Witness the newest OS offerings. The only thing that will prevent it is if enough people simply refuse to use it, if that's possible. It will become reality because most people are inherently lazy and will always take the easy way, blind to potential consequences.

@Indian. and civilization will have a much harder time recovering if our accumulated knowledge vanishes with the lights.
Consider this; if your identity is totally in the cloud (all digital), all of your tax returns, business records, bank accounts, property deeds, birth record, everything, it becomes easy for the government, or whatever powers that be, to simply erase you if you become troublesome. You would not be able to prove you own your house, pay for anything, or even buy food. What if your identity simply vanished overnight, like your posts? Oops.

In case you can't tell, I love a good conspiracy theory! It doesn't have to be completely true to be good. _________________﻿

Looks like the last few post (mine included) from yesterday were deleted here !!! I haven't had that happen before.

Ask Flash. He's been known to have an itchy and sometimes errant trigger finger hovering over the delete key._________________hangout: ##b0rked on irc.freenode.net
diversion:http://alienjeff.net - visit The Fringe
quote: "The foundation of authority is based upon the consent of the people." - Thomas Hooker

Tell me why in the world Google is not good? Seriously, for collecting information about my interests? To show me ads that I might be interested in, and with this providing me free great apps? Yeah, Google is a badass! Not saying about their investment in the open source development.

We are living in the world of money, Google trying to earn them a lot, yes, but they also doing great things. Project Hosting? I/O? SummerCamp? Android? Yeah, they are just making money out of nothing. Oh, wait, or was it Microsoft?

And, sorry, alienjeff, but this one — Critics: Google hides Gay Pride feature — just made me laugh. Let's not discuss such topics. Last edited by Cust0dian on Fri 24 Jun 2011, 16:54; edited 2 times in total

It's been a gratifying week for my fellow nimbophobics. Our numbers are growing by leaps and bounds. Consider just four examples ...

* Apple MobileMe transition and iCloud: Those beautiful online albums of thousands of images and videos? Kiss them all good-bye. Your massive web site? Sayonara.
* A few weeks after being caught dissembling about their encryption keys, Dropbox accidentally removes all security for all accounts for four hours.
* Google is shuttering its hugely hyped Google Health Personal Health Record. Hope you weren't relying on those online medical records you entered.
* My longstanding and much appreciated Google Custom Search pages are, as of today, abruptly overwhelmed with copious top and side Google ads.

These stories range from appalling (Apple) to annoying (excess ads in custom search pages). The Google PHR fail would be the worst, but it's somewhat mitigated by the data exit options they provide and by the two year warning. Those options include CCR XML migration to Microsoft's HealthVault [1].

Friends don't let friends rely on the Cloud. Don't put anything in the Cloud unless you have a way to move your data to an alternative platform. That's as true for your business processes as it is for your family photos.

[1] Any health informatics students looking for a semester project or an easy publishable paper? Create a PHR in Google Health Records. Export as CCR XML. Import into Microsoft HealthVault. Write a paper on the data loss.

Well, you have a central datacenter with a bunch of internetworked servers (interconnected computers/systems to process lots of data at once). We can't let one person have full (root) access, or let one person hog everything in the datacenter; that would be too dangerous and/or expensive. So everybody shares the resources (user limits) and they are able to login from their home/work/etc. computers (remote systems) and access their allotted portion of the datacenter.

Gee, where have I heard of this before?

Well, in the '70s and '80s (and a little bit in the '60s), we had gigantic computers (we called them "mainframes", and boy were they huge!) that didn't do very much and couldn't be moved around hardly at all. So people had 'terminals' (remote systems*) which they used to login to the central computer and do their work or communicate (the old BBS's, Bulletin Board Systems). Obviously, if one person had full (root) access, or hogged too much computing power, there would be problems, so there were rules about that (user limits). We called it "computer timesharing" back then, though.

Gee, everything old is new again?

Yep. Funny, isn't it?

*in the older "timesharing" methodology, the terminals were often what are called 'dumb terminals' -- little more than a screen, keyboard, and (sometimes) printer, connected to the central mainframe computer via wires. The closest modern equivalent is the 'thin client', which is a low-power computer that basically is a fancy interface between a server and a user. Not much difference, then!_________________

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum